I have completed a little test with some of my friends in the last few days. I have removed both Viktor Vaughn’s Vaudeville Villain and King Geedorah’s Take Me To Your Leader out of my disc player and have randomly selected individuals to listen to both albums and tell which one of the two is better. Within the last few days, my discovery has been downright mind-boggling. For those of you who don’t know, Viktor Vaughn and King Geedorah are both aliases for one of the most underrated emcee in today’s hip-hop game. His name is MF Doom and he has been on the top of many hip-hop connoisseurs list since the release of his masterpiece Operation: Doomsday. So when I gathered the responses to the listening test, I discovered that almost everyone that listened to the albums preferred the Viktor Vaughn project to King Geedorah’s space monster fairy-tale. And to think that anything was going to be better than Geedorah this year would have been absurd, especially from the same artist.

Viktor Vaughn’s Vaudeville Villain is the new release from MF Doom this year, making him the hardest working emcee on the planet. His work is not over yet either, since he will be releasing a collaboration with Madlib at the end of the year. But with his over-abundant schedule remains the true gift that Doom brings to hip-hop. Somehow, he only gets better and better after each release. I personally thought that King Geedorah was the plateau of Doom’s career but Viktor Vaughn is another brilliant accomplishment and should be hailed as a truly innovative and captivating album.

The production is very similar to Take Me To Your Leader but lacks the overall rough and experimental quirkiness and unevenness. But that is not a bad thing as MF Doom’s vocal delivery and lyrical assault is put in the forefront of the record and shines throughout the complete album. Where King Geedorah focused on the overall storyline, Viktor Vaughn highlights the unnoticed talent that MF Doom has hidden behind concept albums and steel-plated masks.

MF Doom exemplifies true talent and displays it adequately on every album that he releases. And I am not the only person who will tell you that MF Doom is the best emcee that hip-hop has to offer in this present day. As far as the album is concerned, you can’t get better than his previous work as King Geedorah….or can you? You can be the judge.